Shroud of Turin

Blitz77:

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As for the facial imprint.... I remember reading and watching on tv some program about that it could possibly be caused by radioactivity... kinda like a photographic imprint or something like that.

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Won't work. All kinds of radiation so far discovered are isotropic - non directional - in normal gravity and magnetic fields, so the image would be a 360 deg panpramic picture of a face. In order to have the full-frontal face of the shroud, you have to postulate a hitherto unknown gravitationally anisotropic field.To have any credibility as an explanation, it would require a proof independent of the shroud itself.

blitz77

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ol I think I got confused with something else. Looking around the net, it seems that a guy named Stephen Mattingly proposes that the facial imprint was caused by bacteria-in this case he used bacteria called Staphylococcus epidermidis, which is commonly found on the skin. He estimated that during the crucifixion the number of bacteria could have multiplied 100x within the wounds, culturing a biofilm capable of absorbing water from the surroundings.

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After killing the bacteria, he then smeared the stuff on his skin (!) then applied a linen to the area, then allowing it to dry, then peeled it off-the bacterial imprint was similar in quality to that of the shroud. The bacteria in the shroud may have died, then gradually oxidised causing the stains.

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Won't work. Same objection. This will, again, produce a panoramic view of the head - a 180/360 deg. image.Try it yourself. Wrap a piece of paper round your head, ear to ear. Trace out the major features: nose, mouth, eyes, ears and the outline. Unfold the paper. You get, not a portrait view, as in the shroud, but an "unwrapped" view of the, basically, cylindrical, head.The key point about the image is that it is a flat, portrait style image. This cannot, by any mechanism, be produced from a body after the shroud material has been wrapped round the head.The radiation theory can be "rescued" - although my objections to mechanism still stand - if you assume the shroud was held flat above the face. The bacteria theory cannot be supported in any way given the portraiture nature of the image.

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Interestingly enough, near the facial imprint were two faint imprints; one of a coin that was minted around 29AD, during the reign of Emperor Tiberius, and another if a lepton (a copper piece) from the reign of Pontius Pilate. Of course, you might be wondering why they'd bother putting coins near the eyes of the face- it was Jewish custom at the time of Jesus' death to place coins over both eyes of the corpse

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The same people have prodiuced all sorts of images - flowers etc - from the shroud. Unfortunately the thechnique of image enhancement is highly subjective: if you like something, you keep it, if not, throw it away and try again.Remember the "Face on Mars" - a wholly subjective artifact of image enhancement. Later, better, photogrpahs showed a normal mountain.The technique, as applied to the shroud is all but useless.

While not directly relevant to the topic, the NASA Face on Mars site shows just how easy it is to use image enhancement to "find" things that aren't there.

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All the research has boiled down to an image caused by a radiation energy source we don't know yet how to define. It put a three dimensional image in the cellulose of these flax fibers that the closer the radiation source to the cloth the deeper the imprint, thus we have a three dimensional image burned in ....scorched in on one side only.

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And a perfectly circular argument.Why is the image correct, and not a panoramic view? Because of an unknown radiation source.
How do we know there was an unknown radiation source? Because of the perfect image.You must first demonstrate the existance of this field independently of the Shroud, and then show that this case applies.

Here is a description of the radiocarbon dating of the shroud and showing the impossibility of contamination causing such a gross error as to give the measured dating for a shroud of date 0 CE.

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The carbon-dating results from three different internationally known laboratories agreed well with his date: 1355 by microscopy and 1325 by C-14 dating. The suggestion that the 1532 Chambery fire changed the date of the cloth is ludicrous. Samples for C-dating are routinely and completely burned to CO2 as part of a well-tested purification procedure. The suggestions that modern biological contaminants were sufficient to modernize the date are also ridiculous. A weight of 20th century carbon equaling nearly two times the weight of the Shroud carbon itself would be required to change a 1st century date to the 14th century (see Carbon 14 graph). Besides this, the linen cloth samples were very carefully cleaned before analysis at each of the C-dating laboratories.

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Note that it also deals with the paint on the shroud.Note further that three internationally renowned dating establishments would have to have had samples contaminated by almost exactly the same amount and make exactly the same mistakes in order to come up with concordant results.Note finally that McCrone is not some armchair expert. He has examined the Shroud as part of the scientific team, and is a world-renowned forensic expert.

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test samples were taken from a restored area of salvage " (post 41)

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Did you some how miss this crucial part of the text and its preceeding information ?

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I appreciate this post of yours, but post # 41 clearly explains why the 1988 tests are suspect. Unless you can specifically refute from the evidence given by Dr. Scott, I cannot fathom any satisfying debate being derived by straying from the data and claims of post 41.

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Yes, although I have heard this false claim before, I missed it because, as has been said, it was a throw-away linme in an article concerned largely with contamination.If the author has proof that the samples were all taken from the repaired areas, then why all this palaver about contamination? If this is the case, the dates are wrong.However there are a number of problems.First, let us be frank, this claim ammounts to an accusation of fraud, not on the part of the dating labs, but of all the STURP team - includin Walter McCrone, a known Shroud skeptic. Is this what you are saying?Second, the date is wrong for the repairs, which happened after the fire of 1532. The radiocarbon date was c1325. Are you seriously claiming that the Shroud was repaired with a piece of 200 years old linen the nuns who did the work just happened to have lying around?Finally, a quote from a source who has studied the Shroud, given by asgara:

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Naturally, believers in the Shroud's authenticity have thrown up numerous criticisms that are variously ludicrous, vacuous, and without merit. Contrary to pro-authenticity advocates, the linen samples were not deceptively switched, not taken from the wrong part of the Shroud material, not improperly cleaned and prepared, did not have a bioplastic coating, were not contaminated by modern bacteria and fungi that were not removed, the carbon-14 content of the cloth was not altered by the fire of 1532, the final results were not deliberately falsified by a conspiracy of anti-religious scientists, and so forth. As has been pointed out by others, modern material of approximately twice the mass as the Shroud samples would have to be added to the samples to bring authentic first-century linen up to radiocarbon dates of the fourteenth-century, and this would have been just too obvious to go unnoticed by so many independent investigators. Once again, the ad hoc excuses, criticisms, and counter-arguments of the radiocarbon dating by Shroud enthusiasts were put forward to preserve appearances at any cost, a classic characteristic of pseudoscience. In real science, legitimate and reliable data that falsify one's most treasured hypotheses and beliefs are accepted, and lead one to abandon one's former beliefs. But sindonology is a pseudoscience, not real science.

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On the shroud and painting.Da Vinci could not have painted it - there is documentary evidence of its existance c100 years before his birth.Further, it was declared at the time to be a painting. From here:

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The first historical evidence of the Shroud of Turin dates back to 1389, where it is first written about in a letter from the bishop of Troyes, France to Pope Clement VII. The bishop complains of a piece of linen, approximately 14 feet long and 3 feet wide with the front and back images of a crucified man, being falsely displayed in the village of Lirey since the year 1355 as the true burial shroud of Christ. The bishop continued, stating that the image was cunningly painted and that he had already received a confession from the artist. In a time when forgery of relics was common due to the great money brought in by pilgrimages, the shroud was determined to be a hoax for monetary gain. Pope Clement VII permitted the continued exhibition of the shroud with the stipulation that an announcement was continually made which denounced the authenticity of the shroud as Christ’s burial cloth, referring to it as an artist’s rendition of the crucifixion.

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Please note also the remarks about the prevelance of pious forgeries. I read once that, at the time in question there were about 40 (that we know of) shrouds in existance, and I believe that there are, even now, a few around.

nealfr

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First can I guide you to internet sites that thoroughly tackle the evidence of modern material and ancient material being in the C14 tested samples:-
Page not found – Shroud of Turin Blog and especially http://www.shroud.com/pdfs/textevid.pdf

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There seems to be good grounds therefore for doubting the accuracy of the 1988 C14 test results as representative of the oldest parts of the cloth. The oldest part tested appears to have a date of 200AD.

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No, only wishful thinking and ad-hoc explanations.We are expected to believe that the samples - three in total - were all contaminated by exactly the amount of material necessary tto produce a date concordant with the first appearance of the shroud, that all samples were contominated to nearly the same amount, that a committee of experts missed the contanination when extracting the samples, that thre separate and independent labs missed it. Let's be blunt. What you are alleging is that these experts and the testers are either grossly incompetent or deliberately attempting a fraud.Look here for a report on the dating:

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The sampling of the shroud took place in the Sacristy at Turin Cathedral on the morning of 21 April 1988. Among those present when the sample as cut from the shroud were Cardinal Anastasio Ballestrero (Archbishop of Turin), Professor L. Gonella (Department of Physics, Turin Polytechnic and the Archbishop's scientific adviser), two textile experts (Professor F. Testore of Department of Materials Science, Turin Polytechnic and G. Vial of Muse des Tissues and Centre International d'tude des Textiles Anciens in Lyon), Dr M. S. Tite of the British Museum, representatives of the three radiocarbon-dating laboratories (Professor P. E. Damon, Professor D. J. Donahue, Professor E. T. Hall, Dr R. E. M. Hedges and Professor W. Woelfli) and G. Riggi, who removed the sample from the shroud.

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The shroud was separated from the backing cloth along its bottom left-hand edge and a strip (~10 mm x 70 mm) was cut from just above the place where a sample was previously removed in 1973 for examination. The strip came from a single site on the main body of the shroud away from any patches or charred areas. Three samples, each ~50 mg in weight, were prepared from this strip. The samples were then taken to the adjacent Sala Capitolare where they were wrapped in aluminium foil and subsequently sealed inside numbered stainless-steel containers by the Archbishop of Turin and Dr Tite. Samples weighing 50 mg from two of the three controls were similarly packaged. The three containers containing the shroud (to be referred to as sample 1) and two control samples (samples 2 and 3) were then handed to representatives of each of the three laboratories together with a sample of the third control (sample 4), which was in the form of threads. All these operations, except for the wrapping of the samples in foil and their placing in containers, were fully documented by video film and photography.

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My emphasis. Are you seriously proposing that an incorrect sample was gathered, and that the textile experts would not have been looking for and checking for repairs of known type.The conclusions of the group:

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The results of radiocarbon measurements at Arizona, Oxford and Zurich yield a calibrated calendar age range with at least 95% confidence for the linen of the Shroud of Turin of AD 1260 - 1390 (rounded down/up to nearest 10 yr). These results therefore provide conclusive evidence that the linen of the Shroud of Turin is mediaeval.

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The results of radiocarbon measurements from the three laboratories on four textile samples, a total of twelve data sets, show that none of the measurements differs from its appropriate mean value by more than two standard deviations. The results for the three control samples agree well with previous radiocarbon measurements and/or historical dates.

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